Quote Originally Posted by Jarmam View Post
Now it gets really hazy. So if I "look at the needs of people other than myself" by simply talking about my religion, doing a service for my deity through that regardless of whether this has any effect... this is still considered to "look after someone"? Even if, by doing this, I might hurt the person in case (like the eskimo)? This makes it sound like you should only "care for others", no matter what that might entail of good or bad things, for your own sake.
What if my religion commands me to torture my slave so that he dies after a few days instead of outright killing him? This is also a religious dogma concerning social behaviour within the group. Is this still better?

I cannot wrap my head around the very, very positive light you shine on whether something describes relations to people other than yourself. Why is this inheritely a better thing? What if its a commandment to lead them, granting me the right to remove those that disagree with either my authority as leader or dogma; rule of law? This is, again, social commandment. That something concerns the structure or government of society does not make it "looking after needs", unless you would argue that Im doing it for their salvation, so theologically I am helping them. Is that the case? Else Im confused. Also Jonestown.

And again, I still dont see how you define religion as to include "self-improvement-religions" like Scientology, but also exclude the concept of mysticism, the New Age spirituality, Martin Luther's theology etc etc etc. I am completely aware that defining religion is like pulling teeth, but this is very selective.

The reason Im riding on this is not that I like Scientology. I despise Scientology and everything about it. But what is being said in this thread is that Scientology is somehow the first and only religious movement to concern the self, which is a millenia-old tradition. Scientology almost becomes a scape-goat to oppose in order to win legitimacy for all other religious conduct. And thats just too easy. And its very apparent through the pick-and-choose of texts here.

Did you know that Scientology has a massive program dedicated to the rehabilitation of criminals, both with the intent to help the criminal and to strenghten social stability? They are also vividly opposed to "drug-the-problem-away", something that can very reasonably be argued is an actual problem in areas of modern medicine. See how easy it is? If I look exclusively at these two facts, I can make Scientology look more favourable than Epicurus. And notice how I described their stated doctrines without looking at how its put in practice at all? Its that easy. You did it with ancient Buddhism. I did it with Scientology.
Weeeeell...

I did make a bunch of assumptions in my OP which I didn't bother to explain, so I guess I should:

Firstly, that humanity, at the very least "the west", has over the last two centuries or so moved from a collectivist to an individualist view of society and the individual.
Secondly, I treat religion from a purely secular stance. I do not concern myself with religious texts and such, simply because I consider religion quite irrelevant. I look only at the social actions taken by religious persons in a (semi)religious context.
Thirdly, I do not concern myself with "what if's" and hypothetical situations. I don't care about a situation where a religion commands someone to kill and torture, unless killing and torturing has defined an actual religion in a community context through its existence(which I don't know any who do).
Lastly, I also ignore sects, cults and so on. I'm talking about "2000 years of christianity in Europe", "religion in classic greece" and such, not "The Jesus Christ Church of Hillbilly Whackjobs". As a collectivist socialist, I coldly disregard the individual

Religion has, throughout human history, been given(or taken) the role of the social welfare worker in society. Broadly speaking, kings and despots have attended to foreign relations, while religion has handled internal matters like law, welfare and social coherence. A good demonstration of this is how almost all the laws in a given religion concerns dealings within that religious group, very few laws deal with people outside the group. Jewish law for Jews, Islamic law for muslims, etc. While people who want to pick a fight with a given religion are quick to point at the rules concerning outsiders, those laws are by far the minority. A religion is first and foremost a set of rules for behaviour within a group.

But what are those rules? Rather than pointing at scripture(which I neither read nor care about) or loonies, I suggest that we should focus on the "common believer", ie. Joe Everyday. If you ask any moderately religious person what their faith is all about, they will usually answer something along the lines of "caring about others". The wording may be different from believer to believer, but the basic message is the same. Religion proscribes peaceful co-existence.

The reason for my OP is statements from Scientologists(mostly former). They point at how they have grown personally, how they themselves have benefited from it. Like a guy who went from being shy to holding lectures, for example(from a BBC documentary on scientology I can't remember the name of atm). The collectivist aspect seems to be missing from Scientology.

I've had a number of conversations with a Sudanese guy on my masters program. He's a former school administrator, and has a good overview of many schools. The reason I've talked to him a lot is that he simply couldn't wrap his head around how Norwegian children are able to behave, as we do not have any religion in schools. In his view, a moral(and we're talking basics here, like no stealing, bullying etc) cannot be achieved without religion, and that's the primary role of religion in his mind. As a south sudanese, he's christian, but he didn't care if the school taught Islam or Christianity: the important thing was that they taught religious values, something he thought the secular state schools lacked.

That, to me, sums up the essence of what religion is in a social context. It's primary role and function is to prevent people from being dicks. It is to remind people to look out for people other than yourself.

As to the point about missionaries, a practice I do not like at all, I'd say it still fits the "look out for others"-summary of religion, even if done on purely theological grounds. The religion has commanded the person to stop sitting on his/her bum and fill the needs of someone they do not know. Now, this need is of course a need created solely by the religion in question and so isn't a real need, but it's still a representation of how religion has made someone care about someone other than him/herself.

Anyway, this thread was created after watching a few interviews with Scientology defectors(who disliked the church, but still liked scientology). When they talked about their religion, they exclusively talked about how it has helped them perform better at various things, which I found to be an odd thing when talking about religion. My subsequent tinkering lead me down the path of an individualist vs. collectivist-idea, and so I created this thread to hear what the rest of you thought